[recent contributors]

If you've spent much time trying to help individuals, groups, organizations, or communities you've probably noticed some common patterns:

• Despite your best efforts, your clients routinely return to noxious environments that undermine their progress. 
• Workers in health and human service agencies are so busy responding to crises they have little time or energy to prevent problems in the first place.
• You find yourself wishing that community organizations raised their sights from alleviating individual suffering to seeking social justice.

Sound familiar? Join the club! Organizational workers struggle every day to achieve a balance between helping individuals and changing conditions that cause those "individual" problems in the first place. 

All too often, though, the balance is off. The vast majority of helping professionals spend most of their time helping people one at a time, and again, and then again. Poverty, racism, power inequities, and other structural sources of distress persist. 

SPEC offers an alternative. Our approach is grounded in empirical research, community practice, and community psychology theory and experience. Our message:

You too can be an agent for change!

SPECway.org explains SPEC's origins, rationale, and methods, provides examples of effective change programs, and describes tools for implementing SPEC and measuring its progress. Our forums connect participants in organizations currently working with the SPEC team, members of other groups and organizations wondering what SPEC has to offer, change agents in communities, and researchers and practitioners. And our collaborative Wiki lets members add new resources we can all use in our work.

SPEC's team, based in the University of Miami School of Education, primarily works with participating human services agencies to enhance community well-being and worker satisfaction. We would be glad to work with your organization, too, but SPEC is useful even if you implement its principles on your own. 

SPEC's Four Components

SPEC focuses on four central principles. All are necessary to create change at individual, group, organizational, and community levels.

Strengths

Acknowledging and appreciating people's strengths helps them thrive, but focusing on deficits diminishes their dignity.

Prevention

Preventing ill health and social and psychological problems is better than curing people who already suffer.

Empowerment

Well-being requires control, voice and choice.

Community Change

We cannot eliminate problems one person at a time. We must change conditions that lead to problems in the first place.

Well-being and Levels of Change

The SPEC project is all about well-being at four levels: individual, group, organization, and community. Well-being at all four levels is a cyclical process, which means that problems at any one level typically affect the other levels. This interaction adds to the complexity of creating change.

Fortunately, this cycle also points the way to achieving more effective change for larger numbers of people by focusing beyond the individual.

Where to Go from Here

• SPEC's Four Components in more detail, with tools for action for working as a change agent with individuals, groups, organizations, and communities
• Key Stages for change agents at all levels
• Implementing SPEC Policies and Practices in the Community
• Research and Theory about change in general and SPEC in particular
• SPEC Projects (our work with participating agencies, with related powerpoint presentations and other resources)
• SPEC Wiki for online papers and links to external resources; registered members can add new materials!
• Forums for Discussion
• Frequently Asked Questions

This site offers documents and presentations to read online, search, and even comment on. Download those you find useful. Participating organizations can add documents of their own.

 

Questions? Try the FAQ, the Forums, or contact us directly!